Day 21. Chelsea Cain is the author of The New York Times bestselling thrillers Heartsick, Sweetheart, Evil at Heart, and The Night Season. Her Portland-based thrillers, described by The New York Times as “steamy and perverse,” have been published in over 30 languages, recommended on “The Today Show,” appeared in episodes of HBO’s “True Blood” and ABC’s “Castle,” named among Stephen King’s top ten favorite books of the year, and included in NPR’s list of the top 100 thrillers ever written. Her next book, Kill You Twice, comes out in August 2012.

Cain says her favorite NW indie is Village Books in Bellingham. “My mom had a garden nursery next door, so I pretty much grew up there,” she says. “They let me read books without buying them. If you bought a book at Village Books in the 1980s, it probably has my fingerprints on it.” Read Cain’s interview with Village Books’ staffer Lindsey McGuirk here. 

Here’s her list:

The Sliding Glass Door by Scott Poole (Colonus Publishing). This is poetry for smart people who have very dry senses of humor. My Uncle Phil is a big fan of Calvin Trillin, another smart/funny poet. (Phil used to wear bowties, un-ironically.) I think he will really like this book. Also, I got Scott to autograph it, so it gives me a chance to look impressive in front of the family when Phil opens it. “Why, yes, I do know the poet.”

Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber. I am giving this book to my aunt Colleen, my aunt Patricia, and my stepmother, Susan.  (Please don’t tell them that they are all getting the same present—that would be awkward.) This book is wonderful, really lyrical and bursting with evocative writing. I think a lot of people think it’s going to be sad (it’s about a woman who’s teenage daughter is missing and doesn’t want to be found), but it’s actually life-affirming. Plus, it takes place in Miami and everyone can use some sun this time of year, except people who actually live in Miami.

The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch. Man, I love this book. I’m giving it to my cousin Cecily, who is one of the people I love most in the world. Lidia’s memoir is so rich with poetry and heart and beauty. I just want to read it again and again. It makes me want to be a better writer. Shit, it makes me want to be a better person. Plus, I wrote the introduction, so I can self-promote while giving selflessly.

Damned by Chuck Palahniuk. I get Chuck to sign a book for my brother-in-law every year. Damned is the story of Madison, a precocious 13- year-old who goes to hell. Literally. This will make a nice addition to Ryan’s CP collection, which I’m pretty sure he uses to get girls back to his room. “Hey, baby, want to see my Chuck Palahniuk books?”  Girls love themselves some Fight Club.

The Retribution by Val McDermid. This is the new book in the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan thriller series from the UK. If you have read the first books in the series, you just peed your pants a little from excitement. I have already read the galley, but I’m totally getting the hardback for myself to add to my collection as soon as it comes out in January. (It’s SO GOOD.  Oh. My. God.) I like to have a nice little stack of Val’s books in the guest room for overnight guests who ask for something to read. This ensures that they won’t do any sleeping, which makes them easier to handle in the morning.

Day 20. The first day of Hanukkah. Scott Nadelson is the author of three story collections, most recently Aftermath. A winner of the Oregon Book Award for short fiction, the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, Nadelson teaches creative writing at Willamette University and in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University. His first book of nonfiction, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress, will be published by Hawthorne Books in 2013. His favorite indie is Broadway Books in Portland.

He writes: “I read a lot of great stuff this year, but these five are the books that stick with me the most. You’ll notice that they’re all collections—stories, essays, poems—which is my favorite kind of gift: lots of small things contained in one bigger package.”

Black Cherries by Grace Stone Coates. This was a wonderfully unexpected find. I picked it up mostly because Bison Books, from the University of Nebraska Press, always publishes top-notch work. I’d never heard of Grace Stone Coates, and this book was out of print for nearly fifty years; but it turns out that she was one of our most celebrated short story writers, with a total of twenty stories cited in the back of the Best American Short Stories in the 1920s and 1930s. This book contains eighteen linked stories about a Kansas farming family. They are brief and quiet and mysterious, and capture as well as any stories I’ve read the odd perspective of a child looking at an adult world she only partially understands.

The Return by Roberto Bolaño. Like a lot of people over the past few years, since his books have begun to be translated into English, I can’t get enough of Bolaño, particularly his shorter works. This is the second published collection of the Chilean master’s stories, and like the previous one, the amazing Last Evenings on Earth, these stories are strange and haunting. But they’re also often funny as well, full of a mischievous wit that critics don’t often give Bolaño credit for. What I love about his work above all is that even the most seemingly casual, off-hand tale takes us to unexpected places, to the dark center of his characters’ fears and desires.

The Late Interiors by Marjorie Sandor. Not only is Marjorie a former teacher and a dear friend, but she’s also one of the best writers in the Northwest. Her latest book is a memoir made of smaller fragments—essays, lyrical meditations, journal entries—that cover five seasons during a transitional time in her life. The book is about a house, a garden, an illness, a legal battle with a neighboring institution, but above all it’s about the creative process, the way one constructs a life out of the messy raw material of daily existence. It’s also, sentence by sentence, the most beautiful thing I read all year.

The Professor by Terry Castle. Castle is a rare breed, a literary critic who turns the sharp lens of her scrutiny to include herself in the wide scope of her cultural investigations. These essays are a personal journey into the world of art, literature, and music, and what makes them most exciting is Castle’s exuberant, irreverent voice. Some of them are laugh-out-loud funny, including one that features a dinner party at Susan Sontag’s apartment. Others are devastating; my favorite essay in the collection, “My Heroin Christmas,” is an exploration of the life and work of the jazz great Art Pepper and his connection to Castle’s challenging California childhood.

Requiem for the Orchard by Oliver de la Paz. I don’t read as much poetry as I used to—not nearly as much as I’d like—but this collection really knocked me out. De la Paz is another Northwest writer; he grew up in Ontario, Oregon, and the poems in this collection explore his native landscape in the voice of a speaker caught between hating the hometown he’s escaped and mourning its loss. The poems are elegant elegies to childhood, to former selves, to a changing world. Their images are so vivid they stick in your mind weeks after you’ve put the book down. It’s a testament to a poet’s skill when he can turn teenagers cruising small town streets into the most unusual, evocative ritual you’ve ever encountered.

Day 18 brings us another of our favorite hometown authors and yet another engaging list that we couldn’t get through on a first read because we had to stop and scribble her gift ideas on our personal lists. Cecelia Hagen’s most recent collection of poetry is Entering, which was published this fall by Airlie Press, a nonprofit poetry collective based in Oregon. We loved what she had to say about it here. Hagen is the author of two previous chapbooks, Fringe Living and Among Others. She teaches memoir and poetry writing in Eugene, where she and her husband do most of their tango dancing. Her favorite local indie is Tsunami Bookstore in Eugene. She’s also fond of The Literary Duck, which she says will always be “the bookstore” to her.

Here’s her list:

My favorite book to give is Reynolds Price’s first novel, A Long and Happy Life. The title alone makes it irresistible—who wouldn’t want to give such a thing? Price’s prose is dreamy, languid, and suited to the tale, a love story set in North Carolina in the 1950s. The first sentence, which is nearly a page long, describes Rosacoke Mustian riding on the back of Wesley Beavers’ motorcycle as he takes her to a funeral. Price died last January, and it’s fortunate that he left us so many wonderful books to read.

Last year I gave my son Stephen Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat. I felt a little guilty about it, thinking I was just giving it to him so that I could borrow it back. Song lyrics have a lot in common with poems, and Sondheim’s gossipy insights and observations are like candy, and he’s as hard on himself as he is on anyone else, bemoaning an easy rhyme or a bad word choice. This year, Sondheim has a second volume—Look, I Made a Hat—and my son has made it clear he’d like it, too. Nothing like keeping it in the family!

I’m getting The Meaning of Tango: The Story of the Argentinian Dance by Christine Denniston for my husband, who is my favorite tango partner. It’s a handsome-looking book that explores the history and meaning of the dance, and contains what I consider appropriate technical insights, such as: “The leader must carry the follower’s heart through each step of the turning walk, just as the leader carries the follower’s heart through every other step in the Tango. The two hearts must stay together all the time.”

For a friend who likes to read poetry but doesn’t feel she knows enough to buy it herself, I’m getting a book of Tomas Transtromer’s poems. Transtromer won the Nobel prize in literature this year. The ultra-cool independent press Tavern Books, run by two poets (Mike McGriff and Carl Adamshick), will re-release John F. Deane’s translation of Transtromer’s For the Living and the Dead in January. Transtromer’s world view is haunted, but humane. I think she’ll like it.

I learned about my next pick from the Independent Northwest holiday books catalog—honest, I did! As soon as I read about Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees, I felt it would be a perfect gift for my son-in-law, and one that I could maybe gaze at for a while before I wrapped it. The amazing photographs splay out against a white background. It’s easy to get lost in them! And the author, Nancy Hugo, writes with engaging familiarity about her subject.

Speaking of familiarity with your subject, Evelyn Searle Hess’s To the Woods: Sinking Roots, Living Lightly, and Finding True Home is a memoir that I keep buying and giving. Hess has an amazing tale to tell here, but the most amazing thing is her depiction of nature, and her ongoing quest to find a way to preserve it, and promote it, and enjoy it year-round, in all its guises and glory.

My last pick is a book suitable for anyone: Jan Elliott’s newest Stone Soup collection, Brace Yourself. I’ll give this to my granddaughter—who’s a big fan of the strip–hoping she’ll grow up to have a little bit of the wisdom and humor that Jan’s fine characters exhibit, and the tolerance they ultimately have for one another. But of course I’ll enjoy it for myself first, and then enjoy it all over again when Clio reads her favorite strips to me.

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